Ivor Dixon, managing director of Positive Focus, which distributes XMPie personalisation solutions in the UK, insisted the new agreement would not affect it.

"It is interesting to see that applications we selected as leading edge a few years ago are now in demand from major manufacturers like EFI," he said.

EFI already has a range of variable data printing (VDP) offerings, but director of product marketing Chuck Gehman said this deal would give customers more options such as response URLs that create personalised web pages for recipients.

"EFI has bundled VDP solutions with the Fiery in the past products such as PageFlex Persona and Atlas PrintShop Mail  but they are much simpler software packages than the full range of XMPie's solutions," said Gehman.